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Der Gott und die Bajadere, D254

Introduction

This important poem was a rare excursion into the East for Goethe in the years before his West-östlicher Divan period (see also the even earlier Mahomets Gesang). It was written in 1797 and published in Schiller's Musenalmanach for 1798 with Zelter's melody as part of the supplement provided in a pocket at the back of the book. The idea for the poem came from a story recounted rather dryly in Sonnerat's Journey to East India and China (1783) but marvellously fashioned by Goethe into a tale about the redemptive power of love. The practice of suttee, where a Hindu wife immolates herself with her husband's body, incomprehensible and repulsive to Christians, was treated by Goethe with a characteristic respect for other religions and customs.

The word 'Bajadere' is the German version of the French bayadère (meaning a Hindu dancing girl, particularly at a Southern Indian temple) and derives from the Portuguese bailadiera or dancer. It was Goethe's idea to introduce the god Siva into the poem under the name of Mahadöh or Mahadeva – the great god. The story was made into an opera by Auber and a ballet by Minkus. It is the only song in the repertoire which is about prostitution – a sore point in Schubert's later history when he was to discover the terrible consequences of love at a price. The young composer's selection of this text seems to show a tolerance and freedom from convention that would almost certainly not have reflected his father's religious views, for example, despite the fact that Hegel had already compared this saga to the Christian story of Mary Magdalene.

Schubert's setting is controversial in its unambitious simplicity. Capell favours it and John Reed does not, counting the composer to have been completely led astray by his decision to treat the poem strophically. Fischer-Dieskau finds the poem intractable for musical setting; for him Schubert's solution is too simple and, in the other direction, Othmar Schoeck's too descriptive. It might be added that Carl Loewe's setting, not his greatest, is also episodic and attempts to reflect the poem strophe by strophe. 'The poem', writes Capell, 'makes no call at all for music; but if music there was to be, Schubert's unobtrusive hymn-like tune was better than an elaborate setting which would for a certainty have been tiresome.' In agreeing with Capell, one is reminded of Schubert's 1828 setting of Edward (Eine altschottische Ballade) which in its strophic simplicity seems a failure on paper but which is riveting in performance. Like that ballad, Der Gott und die Bajadere is not the sort of strophic song where the performer can leave out a number of verses. The sense of the story requires almost all of them. Having embarked on the long journey with trepidation, both performer and listener find that the repetitive quality of the music has something hypnotic and mantra-like about it; one is tempted to give the composer credit for having imagined the chants of a far-away land with its exotic religious rites. The tune at first hearing seems merely hymn-like; mention of Mahadöh, Lord of the Earth, in the opening seems to have put Schubert in mind of Haydn's Emperor's Hymn. But the piece has hidden beauties, particularly in the second half where Goethe's metre (a tricky one) requires flowing dactyls to offset the foursquare opening. We are caught up in the grave dignity and concision of the story and, as Capell suggests, are somehow grateful that gratuitous musical illustration does not interrupt its flow. Loewe makes the girl dance trippingly, which adds nothing to the story.

On the manuscript Schubert wrote: 'In these verses as well as in the others the content must determine the dynamics'. We have extended this implied freedom to the allocation of certain lines to other characters in Schubertiad fashion: the main voice of the narrator is supplemented by that of Mahadöh in the opening, and the voices of the temple priests in the final strophes.

Recordings

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Mahadeva, Lord of the Earth,
descends a sixth time
that he might become one of us
and with us feel joy and sorrow.
He deigns to dwell here
and experience all things himself.
If he is to punish or forgive
he must see mortals as a mortal.
And having viewed the town in the guise of
a traveller watching the great, observing the lowly,
he leaves it in the evening to journey onwards.

When he had walked out
to where the last houses are,
he encounters a lovely, forlorn girl
with painted cheeks.
‘Greetings to you, maiden!’ – ‘I thank you for
this honour! Wait, I shall come straight out.’
‘And who are you?’ – ‘A dancing-girl,
and this is the house of love.’ She hastens
to begin the dance with a clash of cymbals.
She knows how to circle round so charmingly;
she dips and turns, and hands him
a posy.

She coaxes him to the threshold
and vivaciously draws him into the house.
‘Fair stranger, this humble abode
shall at once be bright with lamplight.
If you are weary, I shall refresh you,
and soothe your sore feet.
You shall have whatever you desire:
rest, pleasure or play.’
Assiduously she soothes his feigned pains.
The immortal smiles; joyfully he beholds,
through her deep corruption, a human heart.

Falling asleep late while dallying,
waking early after brief rest,
she finds the beloved guest
dead at her side.
Screaming, she falls upon him,
but she cannot revive him.
And soon his rigid limbs
are borne to the funeral pyre.
She hears the priests and the funeral chants;
in her frenzy she rushes and pierces the crowd.
‘Who are you? What drives you to this grave?’

By the bier she throws herself down,
and her cries echo through the air:
‘I want my husband back!
And I shall seek him in the tomb.
Shall these limbs in their divine glory
fall to ashes before me?
He was mine, mine alone,
alas, for but one sweet night!’
The priests chant: ‘We bear away the old,
for long exhausted, lately grown cold;
we bear away the young sooner than they imagine.

‘Hear the teaching of your priests:
this man was not your husband.
For you live as a dancing-girl,
and thus you know no duty.
The body is followed only by its shadow
into the silent kingdom of death.
Only the wife follows the husband;
that is at once her duty and her glory.
Sound, trumpet, in sacred mourning!
Take, O gods, the flower of his days,
take the youth to you in flames!’

Thus chants the choir, mercilessly
deepening the pain within her heart.
And with outstretched arms
she leaps into the burning death.
But the divine youth rises up
from the pyre
and his beloved soars aloft
in his arms.
The godhead rejoices in penitent sinners;
with arms of fire immortals raise
lost children up to heaven.